This past week I received a phone call from a young high school girl asking if I would write an article on what Thanksgiving Day was like when I was a real young boy. I answered that I would be pleased to share some of my old time memories here in the Twin Villages back around 1941.
So I will roll time and years back some 82 years.
We had just come through the Great Depression and if you had a full-time job you were truly grateful. I would say that 60% of the jobs here in the Twin Villages were seasonal. I recall the winter season came early. We had a lot of snow and we could even go ice skating on small ponds by Thanksgiving.
The building of homes by carpenters, brick masons, and other tradesmen stopped. Even road building stopped for the season.
My parents planned early for the long winter season. They always had a real nice vegetable garden and my mother would can all kinds of peas, string beans, beet greens, blueberries, beets, as well as all kinds of pickled cucumbers. She would also can many jars of raspberries.
My father would also save three barrels of potatoes as well as a number of winter squash, such as blue or gray Hubbard squash, for winter use. My mother would also preserve many half pint jars of jams and jellies. My father would also raise some hens for their eggs, as well as for dinner use.
My dad would always plan to get a deer in the month of November, for meat through the winter.
My mother and father would also use the scrap meat of the deer and make and can jars of mincemeat, with which she would make mincemeat pies and mincemeat-filled cookies, which were so good with a glass of milk.
With the help of my father, my mother would also pick out a couple bushels of shrimp and can them for winter use. All these canned preserves would be stored down in the cellar in a large wooden cabinet with four shelves and three wooden doors. It was a beautiful sight to see when completely filled and a truly great feeling of relief, knowing you had a good supply of food for the long winter months.
My father would also go and dig a hod of clams once a month and my mother, with the help of Dad, would make a great clam chowder, as well as clam cakes and clam casseroles. These were great meals to warm your body in cold winter months.
My father would also raise a pig through the summer months and have it butchered and the meat sent away to have it smoked and cured. This would provide us with hams, pork roasts, bacon, and salt pork for the winter months. My dad would also go smelt fishing in the winter and this would also provide the family with fresh fish.
We now turn to the preparation of the Thanksgiving dinner or family feast, where all our close aunts, uncles, and cousins would come and share our Thanksgiving dinner.
I often recall my mother would call or talk to my aunts and uncles and they would all agree on what kind of food each one would bring. So my mother would know what kind of desserts to make and the number of people who would be at the long dinner table.
I recall so many times my father would say to my mother the wood shed is full of nice, dry, split firewood; there is a bend full of kindling to start each fire, and a bend full of hard coal for the cast iron potbelly stove in the living room.
In the kitchen we had a large cast iron cook stove, with a hot water tank on one side and a large warming place over the top of the stove to keep the dishes warm. This large cast iron stove could burn wood or coal. Then beside that we had a so-called end heater, which we used in the summer.
First my mother would bake two mincemeat pies and two squash pies. She would make a real homemade walnut cake. It had a great flavor and was very moist. My mother would make her pie crust with real lard and it would come out so flaky and tender.
She also made a special round tart with an open center that you could fill with a jam or jelly. Everyone loved these with a hot cup of tea or coffee. I liked them with a cold glass of milk. We would often have a 20-pound turkey and a large pork roast. For vegetables, she would have whipped potatoes, squash, onions, and mashed turnips.
For bread, she would bake two large pans of yeast rolls. They would smell so great when cooking and melt in your mouth with a slab of butter. They were enjoyed by all. I loved them warmed up with real maple syrup.
For beverage, my mother would serve hot tea, coffee, apple cider, eggnog, or cold milk. After dinner, if it was too cold to go outdoors, us children would lay on the living room floor by the coal fired potbelly stove and play checkers or some other kind of board game.
Time passes by so quickly and many of my cousins have passed on. I also want to share with you there was uneasiness among the men who sat around the table. Each offered a prayer that our country would not get deeply involved, but just send supplies to England to stave off its invaders. They knew they would be drafted into the armed forces if we went to war. In fact my father served in the Navy and his two brothers in the U.S. Army.
After the war my dad and his brothers so often said it is better to fight on foreign soil than in your backyard and we must never let our armed forces become weak again.
I also think at this Thanksgiving table our thoughts and prayers are on Ukraine and Israel. We must not let these two countries be overtaken by a foreign power. We must keep them supplied with arms. Freedom is not cheap and it comes at a great price. We are a great nation and must come together and be united in one great America.
The world is looking up to us as a land of the free and brave.
Have a joyful Thanksgiving dinner with prayers for our nation and all the different nationalities that make up the United States. Remember, united we stand and divided we fall. We must always protect the freedom that our forefathers fought so hard for, so that we may all live free.
Please enjoy these very old Thanksgiving postcards.
